Stealers Keepers
by hotmilkytea
Summary: [2012] In which Donnie steals one thing too many, inadvertently causes a space war, and Leo gets a stomach ulcer. Probably. (aka How Donnie met Jhanna (and Leo got a stomach ulcer).)
1. part one

so this has been rattling around in my head for a while but now is finally a thing. watch and marvel as the show dances all over my dreams in like, four episodes time.

i present to you:

* * *

 **how donnie met jhanna and leo got a stomach ulcer:**  
 **part one.**

* * *

Leo should have realised that stopping at the Galaxy Mall was a bad idea.

In hindsight, it was a really, _really_ bad idea.

Just.

In the grand scheme of things, even Leo couldn't have predicted that just _going shopping_ would have ended up here. Honeycutt had sat them down and firmly educated them on how not to make an entire planet angry this time; he'd even given them a small allowance, in case anything else got broken, so they could quickly pay for it, apologise, and, more importantly, _leave_.

But this.

This was just.

In the arena, one of the alien women currently throwing down let out a loud, ululating shriek, before dragging her ritual dagger across the throat of her opponent. Black blood spurted across the sand, and, clutching a handful of red moss, Jhanna began to saw off Moriah's head.

The entire crowd dropped to their knees, bowing: " _ALL HAIL THE QUEEN_!"

To Leo's left, he could hear Donnie joining in — " _ALL HAIL THE QUEEN_ " — and he forced himself to not kick Donnie so hard he popped out of his shell.

This was all Donnie's fault.

* * *

"Biggest shopping centre in this quadrant!" Honeycutt had said, his eyes blinking into shopping bags for one brief moment. "I'm sure they'll have something for you boys to look at." Then he'd turned to Casey, looked at the stained pants that Casey had been wearing since before the escape, and added flatly, "I insist that we stop here. No, really. I _insist_."

Once the ship had docked, Honeycutt had led them through the parking lot ( _spaceships, there were so many spaceships_ ) and through a crowd, past glowing, bright shopping booths and carts and all of it — Mikey's excited yelling, and Raph trying to sound totally unimpressed even when he saw the giant alien with faces for feet — was with the backing soundtrack of a soft, delighted, continuous whimpering as Donnie saw the hovercarts, the holoprojectors, all of the weird and wonderful alien technology that Leo had only ever seen in sci-fi movies.

And it was _here_. And it was _real_.

Leo had to clamp down on the urge to pull Donnie's left hand — currently being chewed in excitement — out of his mouth.

"Right," said Honeycutt, stopping near a large glowing info-point. "We'll meet back here in _two hours_ — that's two Earth hours, people, you all know what those are, so _best behaviour_. Any questi—"

Donnie's right hand shot up. "IS THERE A COMPUTER STORE HERE"

Honeycutt poked at the holoscreen, and nodded. "On the third floor, in the blue segme—"

Donnie gasped. It was quite possibly the most joy-filled, longing-filled gasp that Donnie had ever made.

"—nt."

" _QUANTUM COMPUTERRRRRRRRRRS_ " screamed the trail that Donnie left behind.

"Welp," Casey said. "I'm gonna go find what passes for a soda in this place. Red, you comin' with?"

"Ah, _no_ ," Honeycutt said, latching a finger in Casey's collar. "You, young man, are coming with me. Come along, off we go, there's a good fellow."

As Casey was hauled off in the direction of menswear, Leo looked to his brothers, and April, and shrugged. "Two hours?" he said, and everyone peeled off — Raph and Mikey together, April on her own, and then there was Leo.

He had the small credit chip Honeycutt had given each of them tucked into the wrappings of his left hand, and they'd all been thoroughly lectured after the last time they all went shopping — what could possibly go wrong _this_ time?

* * *

Leo eventually caught up with Mikey and Raph in what seemed to be the comic book store. Mikey was fawning over a holocube that was showing some sort of space anime, and while Leo wanted to look at that, he also wanted to look at _everything else_. The credit chip felt like it was burning into his wrist through his wrappings — he wanted to buy comic books, he wanted to buy _space movies_ , he wanted to know what the galaxy's equivalents to _Space Heroes_ were and how much he would be allowed to judge them all and find them lacking.

It was when Leo was looking at a copy of _Fleet and Flotilla_ , and trying to look like he wasn't at all interested in the concept of forbidden tragic romances, that the crackle of a radio caught his attention.

 _— suspect is green, bipedal, two arms and is_ also _armed — back-up requested._

Leo caught Raph's eye; his expression was grim, and serious. When both of them turned, Mikey was already there and ready.

They moved as one, swift and precise. Mikey branched off first, curving off to the left as Raph took the right, and Leo took point. He couldn't shake the feeling of being vulnerable without Donnie at his back.

When they found him, Leo felt relief rise out of his bones in the brief second before he'd assessed the situation: Donnie, flanked by three security guards, standing outside of the computer store. Near them, a nerdy-looking alien — with wiry hair and a third eye in his sternum — was glaring. A small crowd had started to gather, people rubber-necking (some _literally_ rubber-necking) as they passed.

Raph groaned. "Ugh, you gotta be kidding me. Donnie, you got into a nerd fight?"

"Oh, hey, fellas," Donnie said vaguely, with a nervous laugh that all three of them _knew_ was Donnie's _oh-boy-I-hecked-up_ laugh. "Everything's fine — just. Just a minor misunderstanding."

The bigger security guard — easily three times the size of Rocksteady — snorted, and picked up Donnie with one broad, eight-thumbed hand around Donnie's shell. Then, before Leo could order his brothers into action, the guard turned Donnie upside down and shook him.

"Dude," Mikey whispered to Leo over Donnie's loud, screaming protests. "Is Dee… _rattling_?"

"Son, I'm going to have to ask you to come with me," a smaller security guard said, as a handful of very small, very expensive looking pieces of tech came tumbling out of Donnie's shell, and landed on the ground, one by one.

* * *

The security office was small, and airy — looked more like an information desk than somewhere that was currently holding his brother prisoner. Honeycutt had turned up about fifteen minutes after they hauled Donnie through a forcefield and out of sight, and dumped a suspiciously-clean-smelling Casey on the sofas. Ten minutes after that, April had turned up, looking blown-out and frantic, and it was about thirty seconds ago that the Fugitoid had finally gotten to the front of the queue and was trying to explain why, exactly, Donnie needed to be bailed out immediately.

( _"Zayton. Z-a-y-t— without the diacritics, yes — o- well, I suppose I would be their legal guardian, yes— Earth. I know! Lovely place. Better to visit while you still can."_ )

Raph took a seat on one of the benches provided, his shell squeaking on the covers every time he shifted. Leo situated himself against the wall, able to see whoever was coming or going.

Mikey, April and Casey sat on another bench, April's fingernails digging tightly into her arm until Casey reached over and pulled her hand into his. She snatched it away, getting to her feet and pacing instead, and they all watched as a big, lumbering alien, all extremities bound in light, was tucked into an oversized vacuum tube, and boosted to somewhere they couldn't see. "Is Donnie gonna go in that?" Mikey asked, his voice cracking.

"No," Leo said firmly.

And then they waited.

April kept pacing. Then Raph started, his big fists curled tight and Leo could see, in the tension in Raph's arms and shoulders, that he was just as tightly-wound as Leo felt: that if he could, he'd tear through the walls, and drag Donnie by the tails of his bandana all the way back home, to the lair if they could, and never let him out of their sight.

( _Once, Mikey had asked one too many times why they couldn't talk to humans, why they needed to stay away from the mole people down at City Hall — who weren't real moles, from the sewer workers, from the cops who came looking for runaway kids, and sensei told them about tables and knives and police and the government, and then Mikey had never asked again._ )

"LIGHT CUFFS," Donnie said, when he finally got his phone call. He held his bound wrists up, beaming, and Leo couldn't scream and stab them off as a reply, so he settled for screaming internally instead. "Leo! Do you see these? And oh, the _locking_ systems, it's _light-years_ away from anything the Kraang are doing! You know, I figure if I can get even a _fraction_ of the tech that they're using for this small holding facility then it would _really_ help us when we get home—"

"YOU'RE IN JAIL, DONNIE," Leo finally yelled, throwing his hand out. It cut through Donnie's hologram, leaving a slick, oil-like effect in its wake until Donnie's plastron reformed in the light.

"Well that's just _rude_ ," Donnie sniffed, glancing down, and then back up at Leo. "And it's not _jail_ , it's a _temporary holding facility_ until I speak to the Advocate."

"You are _in_ ," Leo said, biting the words out one by one as though that would make his stubborn, stupid brother realise just how much trouble he was in — if not with the Advocate, then with Leo himself. And with sensei, when they all got home. " _jail_. What if they press charges?! In case you forgot, we have a _world_ to save. And a countdown on it!"

"Okay, first of all, you really need to stop watching _Law and Order_. Second of all, I'm a minor species from an underdeveloped planet that hasn't even gotten FTL travel yet. It'll be _fine_. I'll be out of here before you know it."

"You stole computers!"

"I didn't _steal_."

"Don—"

"Leo, I'm a _ninja_. I've got a plan." Donnie huffed, his hologram folding its arms.

"I'll tell you what your plan is. Your _plan_ is to sit there, and _shut up_ for the next hour or whatever until the Fugitoid bails you out. And then you're going to go back to the ship, and then we're going to _leave_." He wanted to say more, about how when they got back Donnie was getting a bell tied to his shell, and he was getting grounded, and Leo was never letting him out of his sight again, because Leo had seen far too many movies where _stealing_ meant _surprise! we're cutting your hands off_ , and Donnie needed his hands, and Leo needed his brother, healthy and whole and unharmed.

Donnie turned his head, listening to something being said off-camera. Leo couldn't hear it, and the _not-knowing_ of what was going on with Donnie gnawed in his gut. He was supposed to know these things, he was supposed to look after his brothers. Now Donnie was in Space Jail, and Leo wasn't in there to get him _out_.

"I've gotta go," Donnie said, but Leo had already figured that his time was up. "It'll be fine! Honestly, I think this is going to be a really good thing for me!"

"Oh my god."

"Say hi to the others for me!"

As Leo shuffled back from the holopod, Raph jerked to his feet, followed by April. "So? Is he gettin' out?"

"Is he gonna be okay?" Mikey asked, and over his shoulder, April looked at Leo too for the answer.

"I'm sure he's fine," Leo said. "Where's the Fugitoid?"

"Still talking," April replied. She scratched at her elbow, looking nervous.

"You okay?"

April smiled tightly. "Let's just say I'm not used to cops actually listening."

Leo shifted, and Mikey reached over, slinging an arm around her shoulders. During those first few weeks topside, when April had fallen into their lives, half of her time outside of school, when she wasn't at the lair, she'd been talking to the police about her dad's disappearance, until they'd finally given up. Leo had never let himself think about where they might be now, if the police had just listened to April _once_ , and dug the Kraang out before they'd managed to wreck New York the first time.

A soft whirring to Leo's left sounded, and Fugitoid cleared his throat. "I'm afraid the Advocate has already gone home for the evening," Honeycutt said. "So I have an appointment for tomorrow morning, first thing."

Leo's chest clenched.

"What, so we're just gonna _leave_ Donnie locked up?" Casey asked, cutting a hand through the air. "No way!"

"We really don't have much of a choice, now come along. Look on the bright side! The prisons on this planet are really very comfortable — at least, that's what I've seen on the extranet. Toilets with _seats_! Can you imagine?"

Leo glanced to Raph, who nodded once, firmly. They didn't even need to look for Mikey this time.

 _Let's go._

And as Leo sank into the shadows with his brothers at his side, he heard Fugitoid: "Oh, for the love of—"

* * *

The cells of the holding facility were neat, and tidy, with shiny walls and glowing forcefields at the door each cell; depending on the level of the offender, the light of the forcefield could be green, or blue, all the way up to stark white for the most dangerous. Most of the cells were empty; the station had been generous with all of its facilities, on the off-chance of a particularly rowdy crowd or three meeting at the wrong place at the wrong time.

There were two prisoners that evening — a terran ( _green: minor shoplifting_ ), and a species from Alpha-Tauri ( _blue: turned over a noodle cart because they were cheap with the spices_ ) who had melted back into a gelatinous state, just to get rid of zir ears because of the noise from zir neighbour —

" _ONCE AGAIN, FROM THE TOP — ONE HUNDRED DECIMALS OF PI ON THE BOARD, ONE HUNDRED DECIMALS OF PIIIIIIII, YOU TAKE ONE DOWN, YOU DO MATH AROUND, YOU DON'T HAVE AN ACCURATE CIRCLE NOMOOOOOOOORE_ "

— and when the security guard on duty finally got _goddamn sick_ of the singing, he decided to make his rounds early, and maybe hit the sleep-gas button on the cells.

Except, when he got there, the speaker had been pulled out of the wall of the cell, its wires reconfigured. From a small, jury-rigged audio-clip, playing on, and on, and on, a voice screamed/sang: " _NINETY EIGHT DECIMALS OF PI ON THE BOARD, NINETY EIGHT DECIMALS OF PIIIIIIIIIII_ "

There was no terran to be found.

* * *

 **next part soon! happy nano, guys!**


	2. part two

thank you guys so much for your comments! this is (hopefully) gonna be a fun ride!

next up: Donnie tries to break out. His brothers try to break _in_. Guess how well that goes.

* * *

 **Stealers Keepers  
part two**

* * *

"Okay, ninjas," Leo hushed, once they'd snuck past the first line of security. "do we all know the plan? Any questions?"

Mikey's hand shot up.

Leo sighed. "Raph, do _you_ know the plan, so that Mikey knows the plan?"

Raph spun his sais, clutching them tightly in his fists. "For the fourth time already, _yes_ , can we just _go_?"

* * *

"Ohhh, that's not good," Donnie said to himself, peering through the air vent. Below, four guards went stomping past, armed with phasers, and in the background, he could hear another guard yelling _HOW DO WE SWITCH THIS THING OFF_ as Donnie's own voice merrily continued to sing about pi.

Gently, mindful of his plastron against the metal, Donnie eased himself further along, aiming for silence, and stealth. It hadn't been too difficult to get out of his cell; the tricky part had been memorising the guard's routes, and then annoying them enough to make sure that their checks became as quick as possible, and then as far apart as possible. Once that had been accomplished, it was simply a matter of some quick, clever engineering work, and boom! One free turtle. Now, it was just a matter of accurately navigating the vents until he found the air system for the whole station, and then to sneak through that, and back to the ship.

No sweat.

…Okay, some sweat. But not much.

And if he was honest, Donnie was looking forward to his triumphant return back to the ship — didn't need saving, didn't need Raph to bail him out, all he needed was just some good, old-fashioned ninjaing, and a little bit of science on the side. Now, all that was left was some luck to get him _all_ the way back, and then he could strut up through the hold, into the mess hall, and preen while his brothers realised that they were not worthy. And maybe April would want to hang out for a little while…just her and him. Maybe she'd been worried about him.

He sighed, happily.

"Um, boss?" said a lumbering recruit below, in a red shirt. He wore a badge that translated as IT'S MY FIRST DAY PLEASE SAY HELLO, and Donnie almost (almost) felt bad for the guy.

"What is it?" The lead guard didn't turn around.

"Um." The new guy's face was viscous and soupy, four eyes floating gently around in all directions. Donnie drew back carefully, making sure he was well out of the line of sight. "There's been a break-in."

"Yes, that's why we're here."

"No, boss, a break- _in_. Upstairs just called it in."

"What?" She paused, her visor blinking as text scrolled across it — she was too far away for Donnie to read what it said, but it didn't matter; that sinking feeling in his stomach told him all he needed to know. He needed to move. "What the hell?" The lead guard snapped, shoving her visor back. Her eyes were a watery, liquid yellow. "Who the hell breaks _into_ a jail?"

"Three of 'em," said Red Shirt, hefting his phaser. "Should we call for back-up?"

Three.

"Oh no," Donnie said to himself, just as Mikey hollered _BOOYAKASHAAAAAA_ and slammed feet-first onto the Red Shirt's face. It left a large, sticky imprint, and one eyeball went bouncing across the hall. "Nooooo no _Mikey_!"

The lead guard fired her phasers; Leo ducked and wove around the blasts, and then got up in her face, his hand fisting in her uniform. "Where is our brother?" he snarled, and Donnie just waved sarcastically from behind the grate. Leo couldn't see it, but it made him feel better.

"Leo, did you hear that?" Raph said, shaking out his fists. "I think it's Donnie! This way!"

"What!?" Donnie yelped through the grate. "No, not _that_ way, I'm right—"

But they had already left, running in the direction of—

Donnie strained his ears.

 _"—_ _YOU TAKE ONE DOWN, YOU DO MATH AROUND—_ "

And then he buried his face in his hand.

* * *

The nearest grate was too small for him to squeeze through, and so he had to scoot backwards to one he'd passed about a quadrant ago, stomping the panel out and having to just decide _oh the heck with it_ as it clattered against the floor. His nice, neat escape plan had gone to hell the second his brothers had decided to mount a rescue mission.

(Really, he reflected later, he should have expected that they would come to get him — but _really, they really shouldn't have_.)

The grate dropped him out in a small office. He landed silently on the desk, somersaulted onto the floor and, once he'd stuffed something flash-drive-y into his wrist-wraps, he slid out into the corridor, listened for the sound of violence, and started to run towards it. One day, maybe, he would politely tell Raph that the art of being a ninja meant that someone could not hear the impact of your fists into someone's poor, unsuspecting face, from sixty metres away. As it was now, he used his brother's punching as a homing beacon — they weren't too far away now, and when Donnie found them, they could all break out, and go back to the ship, and leave very quickly before the Space Police came running after them.

He figured, using Raphdar, that he was maybe another hallway or two away — there were no more guards around, Donnie assumed that perhaps they had all succumbed to Raphzilla, or decided to bail out, or they were waiting for something really, really violent to get here (and knowing their luck, Donnie assumed that the way out would be less quick-let's-sneak and more oh-my-gosh-they-have-guns). He put his head down, and continued to run, his heart pounding in his throat — because okay, he was here, and he could deal with that, but the thought of Raph having to defend himself in court was the stuff of nightmares.

(" _Mister Hamato, how do you plead?_ "

" _I plead for the chance to beat your face in, how about that?_ "

" _No further questions, Your Honour."_ )

And then the lights flared, and a voice poured from the speakers:

" _INITIATING LOCKDOWN PROCEDURE ATRAXA-5. ALL PERSONNEL REPORT TO CHECKPOINTS. INITIATING LOCKDOWN PROCETURE ATRAXA-5. ALL PERSONNEL REPORT TO CHECKPOINTS._ "

A klaxon started to blare.

" _No no no no no no no—"_

The corridor ahead flashed white.

"— _Oof_."

Donnie heard, rather than felt, the dragging squeak of his face sliding lip-first down the forcefield.

* * *

Little tiny flames erupted in Fugitoid's eyes. " _You broke in,_ " he said. It was not an invitation to join the conversation, and Leo saw the sides of his arms rattle as though the professor was trying very hard to not just break out his several guns and pistol-whip them all.

Leo did not feel guilty, but he, Raph and Mikey stood and looked dutifully shamefaced anyway — because it _was_ shameful. They got caught, after all.

"Well!" Fugitoid flicked his hands upwards. "I hope you're happy. Because you _broke into a holding facility_ , not only are _you all_ looking at charges, but my ship — _my ship_ — has been disabled pending further investigation. We're on the clock here, people. Six months _minus_ a juvenile delinquency charge, and counting.."

Leo glanced at Raph, who rolled his eyes, doing what Leo was too polite to do.

April raised her hand. "What about Donnie?"

Fugitoid turned his body without turning his head, and slammed his hand onto the touchpad. Behind him, the screen lit up, a reticule blinking over a nearby moon. "Thanks to his own little escapade, Donatello has been transferred to a _maximum security facility_. That's _prison_ , in case you weren't quite sure. Not just a cushy little holding facility. _Prison_. Home to charming individuals such as thieves, murderers, body-snatchers and politicians."

Mikey stretched, and made a pointed example of yawning. "So, just like New York then."

Raph snickered. Fugitoid glared.

"I have an appointment tomorrow" — his eyes turned briefly into clocks — "to discuss Donatello _and_ to discuss your little adventure as well. Now. I have locked the doors, and the navigation system has been thoroughly disabled — not that I couldn't re-enable it myself but somehow I doubt you want to leave your brother behind in this system, so! Should anybody — _anybody_ — try to leave this ship until morning, I will be very, very displeased. Do we understand?"

It was difficult to feel threatened by such a polite robot, but Leo nodded, and once he did, Raph and Mikey did too. Seemingly satisfied, Fugitoid rotated so that all body parts were facing the right direction, and left the room, muttering under his breath.

 _Save the world, Zayton_ , _Bishop said. It'll be easy, he said. I'll buy you a new gyro, he said. Look after six delinquents, he didn't say._

 _…_ and as Fugitoid's grumbling faded into the ship, Leo was fairly sure that the weird little _beep!_ and _bloop!_ sounds he made were actually just self-censorship.

"Whoa," Casey slouched down in his seat. "I totally thought for a minute he was gonna blow a fuse or something."

"Poor Donnie," April said, resting her chin on her arms. "It must be so awful for him."

"Are you kidding?" Raph grumbled as he crossed the room, slapping the replicator until it gave him a soda. "Maximum security? Nerdasaurus down there will think it's Christmas. _Aliens_ ," he breathed, high-pitched and googly and twisting his face until it sort-of matched the expression Donnie always wore whenever he was confronted with something beautiful and scientific and incomprehensible. " _Science! Petty theft!_ "

Leo ducked his head, trying not to smile.

"Yeah, I meant to ask," Casey leaned over, stole a mouthful of Raph's soda, and dodged the punch afterwards. It was almost impressive. "Does he do this a lot? Like, stealing stuff?"

"In his defence," Leo said, tired. "It's usually from the Kraang or the Foot. Anything that we need, that could screw them over?" He shrugged. "I'm not gonna lose any sleep over Dexter Stockboy missing a test-tube. I guess just being in space with all this new tech around was too much for him to resist. I mean, it's _Donnie_."

Casey pulled a face, like Leo had only half-answered his question, or he hadn't answered it in a way Casey really liked, what with his own overblown sense of justice and morality ( _Casey Jones! Professional graffiti tagger and dark vigilante oF THE NIGHT, but stealing is always wrong!_ ). Leo let it go, ambling over to the replicator to get a glass of milk and then coming back to the table.

He turned to Mikey, whose face was scrunched up in deep thought. "He'll be fine, Mikey," Leo said, reassuringly, and squeezed Mikey's shoulder. "It's Donnie. Like Raph said, he's probably too busy mooning over his door lock or something."

"Yeah, I guess, but… he's in prison. Jail. The Big House. Sing Sing. Up the River. Rocking the Jailhouse. Stripe City. He's—"

"—Only gonna be there for a couple more days," Leo interrupted, before Mikey really got going. "Maybe not even that."

"But."

"But what, Mikey?"

"Is Donnie gonna get a tat?" Mikey asked.

"No, Donnie is not going to get a tattoo. He's in prison, not the yakuza."

" _If_ Donnie gets a tat, can I have a tat?"

Leo pinched between his eyes. The migraine was already starting to build."Do you really want to explain to Master Splinter why you have a tattoo?"

"Dude, I already told you, I'm gonna get a face on my face, he totally won't know the difference!"

* * *

The issue with having a father who insisted on morning exercise, every morning, at 6am on the dot, with no reprieves, not even for Christmas, was that it didn't matter what time Donnie went to bed — his body clock would wake him at 6am, on the dot, every morning. Broken wrists didn't matter, sprains didn't matter, just being _really overtired_ didn't matter. The night after they sloped home having been kicked around by the Shredder for the first time, they were up at 6am, in the dojo, ready to train (gently).

Even if you were suffering from the worst case of turtle-flu known to man, sensei would sit you in the corner with a blanket and some herbal tea that tasted of sweat and ginger, and make you watch, and judge your brothers.

So when Donnie woke, the next morning (in ALIEN SUPERMAX DETENTION oh god there were lasers and scanners EVERYWHERE and his food had come by a one-way teleporter, and a screen above his bed talked about how his appointment with the Advocate had been re-scheduled and also his companions had left several voicemails), his muscles were already twitching with the need to stretch.

He rolled off of the bed, then watched it _automatically fold into the wall_ , unable to tamp down his glee at the process. Science! A bottle of water that harvested the necessary molecules from the air itself, and never emptied, was on a small table in the corner, and a button near the transporter was glowing gently — whenever he pressed it, it would feed him.

…okay, so _that_ felt uncomfortably like being a lab animal.

But still! He wouldn't be here for long, and when he left, they really wouldn't miss the teleporter, the light-wall generator, the scanners…

Some people, Donnie supposed, would say that perhaps Donnie should learn his lesson.

Donnie would disagree with that assessment. What Donnie needed to do was to learn _from_ his lesson, and not get caught next time. What was the point of being a ninja otherwise?

As he hit the halfway point in his sit-ups, he glanced at the screen again. It showed short video previews of the messages left for him: Fugitoid, and one from an ethereal-looking alien, and two from his brothers, one of which — Raph, shoving Mikey's face away from the camera so he could continue yelling, gave Donnie a clenching rip of homesickness.

Okay, so maybe going to alien jail wasn't the great idea Donnie had thought it would be.

He probably wouldn't hear the end of this.

If they got back home alive and in one piece, Splinter would probably ground him for this for, like, a year.

Donnie clenched his fist against the phantom sensation of his father's fur brushing against his arm, still warm even in death; the scent of blood spilling out in the brief moment before everything smelled of ozone and fire.

 _When_ they got home, Splinter could ground him all he wanted.

His shell made a grinding, rocking sound as he launched back into his routine, and in the brief quiet between each one, he could hear the next cell moving around, someone breathing harshly as they moved. It sounded like some sort of body-combat, like krav maga, designed to hurt instead of perfect a kata.

When he finished his rep, he sat up, crosslegged, staring at the wall in front of him. It was a thick, opaque glass-like substance; Donnie couldn't see anything through it, nor did he think he could break through it using just physical force, but he could hear some of his wallmate's movements, and wondered.

Well, there were no rules about not making friends while they were trying to save the world. He cleared his throat. "Uh, good morning!" he said, trying for cheerful. "Couldn't, uh, couldn't help but overhear you working out over there. Do you, uh, want a spotter or anything? Did I wake you?"

The person in the next cell laughed — low, and quiet, with a sound of rushing leaves. "No, you did not wake me," she - she _sounded_ female, at least - said. "Though I am surprised to have a neighbour. You must have committed quite the crime."

"Oh," Donnie laughed. "No, I just broke out of a detention facility over at the mall. I think they put me here to make sure I couldn't go anywhere else."

"Escaped?" He heard, in her tone of voice, an eyebrow raising. He wondered what she looked like. Oh, he had seen plenty of aliens already — but that was just the point! There were _so many_! And only _some_ of them had tried to kill them.

Donnie shrugged, and hoped that she could hear him smiling. "Eh, I'm not really a guy who likes to be locked up for too long."

"I see. And did you find it difficult?"

"Well, not really. It was pretty easy — just needed to reroute the power and disable the forcefield I mean, it was a little trickier than what I'm used to, but, y'know, _the measure of intelligence is the ability to change_."

"I see," his neighbour said again. He heard a rattling through the walls. "And what is it that you're used to?"

Donnie leaned back onto his hands, pleased for the conversation, and to be allowed to show off to someone who was _interested_ in what he could do, without Raph barging into the conversation because _SCIENCE WORDS, DONNIE, NOBODY CARES_. "Oh, we've been fighting the Kraang for the past couple years back on Earth. I'm kinda the tech guy."

"Interesting. The Kraang, you say."

"Yeah. Little squishy alien things? Pink? Always angry?"

"I know of them. They are not a problem on my world."

"And… what world is that?" Donnie asked.

"It is not one you would know."

"No," Donnie agreed, "but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to know anyway."

The translator told him that she had laughed, a short, sharp noise that was not unkind, but beneath it, he heard the sound of a breaking branch. "Tell me your name."

"Dee-uhhhh, Donatello."

There was a soft hum through the wall - an _interested_ hum.

"My name is Jhanna. Tell me of how you escaped your first imprisonment."

* * *

 **aND NOW THE FUN PART STARTS. comments are loved and appreciated! have a great day, guys!**


	3. part three

thank you again for your lovely comments! it really makes me happy that people are enjoying this!

 _this chapter:_ heeeeeeeere's jhanna!

* * *

 **Stealers Keepers  
part three**

* * *

Leo woke up the next morning to a bright fanfare — the theme song to _Space Jam_ , which resulted in Mikey _and_ Casey bouncing down the hallway pounding on Leo's door yelling _GET UP AND SLAM, AND WELCOME TO THE JAM_ — and obnoxiously cheerful British English: "Come along, up, up, you all need to be bright-eyed and shiny-shelled before nine!"

April bailed on training to use the shower before anybody else, and once training was done and Leo dismissed his brothers (it was strange to be the sensei, and not the student, knowing that right now back on Earth, another him was following the lesson his father was teaching), they each got cleaned up and ducked into the mess hall.

They ate quickly before Fugitoid turned up, babbling about good impressions. He lined them all up, checking that they were clean, and showered — he waved a small wand that detected odours ("Very _good_ Raphael, both armpits! I'm impressed! Let's try to keep it up, shall we?" he said, and Raph looked _outraged_ but privately, Leo totally agreed), and made them all smile to check their bright, shiny white teeth.

"And as for you—" Fugitoid looked at Casey. "Well, you'll do. Now, shall we go—"

Something bleeped on the main screen, and a window flashed up on a nearby monitor.

Three aliens were standing at the opening to the cargo bay.

"Oh," said the Fugitoid. "That's strange. Do excuse me."

Leo leaned in close. "Are those the cops?" he asked. They didn't look particularly threatening — two of them were small, and official-looking, one draped in a smart cloak and holding a clipboard.

But one of the aliens looked bigger than Slash, with more arms and probably half the brain. The muscle, Leo thought, already picking up where its weak spots could possibly be, and how quickly Raph and Casey could disable the alien, if they needed to run. "Alright," Leo said, when the aliens had vanished from the monitor. "Places, everyone." He clapped his hands and watched as Raph sullenly straightened and moved four paces to the right, as Mikey boosted himself up to sit on the table, and April – their decoy – brushed down her spacesuit and tried to look smart and presentable. Fugitoid's voice echoed down the hallway as four sets of footsteps approached:

 _Aaaah, Advocate, welcome! The boys are just about ready, won't you come in— Officer, you too, good to see you! And you too. And— Police Commissioner? Oh dear, I do hope we have enough chairs…_

The Advocate turned out to be the tall, grey alien, and what Leo had thought was a cape was actually films of skin drifting around her like webbing. She glided across the floor into the mess hall, and Leo couldn't not stare. He tried, but— but he _couldn't not stare_ until Fugitoid cleared his throat pointedly.

"I am Taani," the Advocate said, her voice a soft tritone. "I am the Advocate in your brother's case."

Leo moved to shake her hand, then stopped, glancing to Fugitoid, and settling for a short bow instead.

Advocate Taani flared her neck-ruff. "I see you've encountered Salamandrians on your journey," she said, then turned away. "Professor. Thank you for accommodating us on such short notice."

"Oh, that's quite alright — we're all friends here! …albeit, _some_ friends have one of us in prison, but we can work something out, right? Tea? Coffee? Blended Astragarian sand-worm?"

"Unfortunately, we are not here for pleasantries," Taani said. "There are things we need to clarify regarding your ward. According to the laws of his planet, he is not yet an adult."

Honeycutt glanced to Leo, who cleared his throat. "We're seventeen," Leo said, then wondered if that was even true — if they'd time-travelled, were they _still_ the same age, or did their ages change as well? "Technically," he added, and hoped that that was enough.

The Police Commissioner – a smaller, squatter alien than the six-armed brute he'd brought with him, with an angular head covered in a viscous, navy hide – frowned.

"Little bit of timey-wimey temporal nonsense," Fugitoid said. "And they're from a very backwards planet — still divided into individual _nations_ , can you believe it? But yes, according to the laws of the _country_ — so quaint! — these boys are _technically_ from, Donatello would class as not-an-adult, yes. Can't even vote. _Can_ own guns, though. Always thought that was strange."

"And they are all brothers?" Taani asked.

"Yeah," Leo interrupted. "Donnie's our brother." All of the aliens glanced briefly at April, and Casey, before Leo clarified: " _Our_ brother." He pointed at himself, Mikey, and Raph.

"Technically we're quadrupeds," Mikey said, and preened.

"Quadrup _lets_ ," April corrected. Raph rolled his eyes. "What?"

"Wow, it's like he never even left." Raph folded his arms. "When's he gettin' out?" he asked Taani, jabbing a thick finger in her direction. "You got the stuff back, didn't you? So when's he getting out?"

"That's not how the justice system works," Taani said smoothly, then rolled right over Raph's upcoming snarky reply with, "And that is not what we are here to discuss." She rolled her back, frills flaring and smoothing down once, and Leo could feel himself tensing for the blow — bad news was coming, something had happened, he knew it, he could _feel_ it.

"So what is?" he asked.

The Police Commissioner sniffed, and Leo realised that as the conversation had gone on, his skin had changed colour; it was now an irritated-looking sky-blue. He shook his head. "It's an embarrassment to the force, and to the justice system in this sector," he said, and Leo felt dread collect in his stomach. Then the Commissioner straightened, his shoulders pulling into some sort of official formation, and when he spoke he was formal, and to the point: "We regret to inform you that early this morning, Donatello Hamato was removed from custody."

The room erupted. Leo said " _WHAT_?" at the same time Raph did; April yelped " _by who_!?" and Fugitoid's eyes flashed into big round circles.

"We have reason to believe that he was abducted by a fellow inmate," Advocate Taani said, breezing past their shock and holding a small holocube out. She pressed a button, and a face flared out of the light; stern and defiant. She reminded Leo of Karai. "What do you know of this woman?"

"Oh my." Fugitoid leaned close, his hand drifting to his chin. "Is that— oh _my_."

"Tal'Jhanna xan'Jhanna," said Advocate Taani. "Yes."

"Oh dear," Fugitoid replied. He drew back, one finger resting gently at the grill of his mouthpiece. It was an expression that was somewhere between _mildly surprised_ and _oh god no_. Leo had seen it before – most of the time, on Donnie's face. He did not like it. "Oh dear oh dear. And you're— quite sure?"

"They were in neighbouring cells. We _also_ have reason to believe that she convinced him to assist her escaping."

It was one vague answer too many, and before Leo could interject himself, Fugitoid snapped, "Oh, for goodness' sake, if you have _evidence_ , tell us what the evidence is!"

Taani pulled out another holocube, and silent footage shone of Donnie doing sit-ups, then talking to whoever it was in the next cell, then digging into a panel on the wall, then shorting out the forcefield to his cell, fist-pumping, then vanishing.

"After this," Taani said, "they proceeded to subdue several guards, then commandeer a prisoner transport after spending five minutes in the armoury and stealing several weapons. Thirty seconds after leaving atmo, all tracking signals on the transport ship were deliberately disabled."

There was a beautiful, co-ordinated slapping sound as Raph and April facepalmed as one. Leo was almost impressed, and more than tempted to join them.

Casey leaned forward, pulling his thumb out from where it had been pressed between his teeth, and he jabbed it into the holo of Tal'Jhanna's face. "Wait. Wait, wait, who's this— tam-jamma-yo-mamma person?"

Fugitoid sighed, glancing helplessly towards the Police Commissioner, and then back to Casey. "Tal'Jhanna xan'Jhanna _was_ the heir to the throne of a system not too far from here. She was deposed several months ago and vanished. I suppose through _entirely reputable_ _means_ she somehow ended up in your prison?"

"We are investigating that," the Commissioner said stiffly, and Leo got it: _we are investigating who it was who got paid off_. He'd seen enough Law  & Order to know.

"Dude. So Donnie got turtle-napped by a _space queen_?" Casey leaned back on his hands. " _Nice_."

"Technically, no. After she was overthrown a few months back, she lost the title and— oh, you're going to think it anyway, _yes_ , he got _turtle-napped_ by a _space queen_ ," replied Fugitoid, with all the necessary air-quotes and drips of sarcasm. "So what happens now?"

"We have reason to believe that the fugitives have gone to rendezvous with a group of rebels intent on taking down the current monarch. In light of these events, we have elected to drop charges against the remaining Hamato terrans, as well as maintain the charges against Donatello as a minor misdemeanour only."

Relief bubbled through Leo, and somewhere behind him, he heard April sigh, clearly relieved too. No treason charge for Donnie. No space guillotines, or whatever. Soon Donnie would be back, get a slap over both of his wrists, and then they could go on their way.

"So, what?" Raph asked. "When's he coming back? You are going to _get_ him back, right?"

Taani straightened. "This sector has signed a Non-Intervention Treaty. We apprehend, we discipline, but we do not involve ourselves in civil war. The most we can offer is repatriation."

"Yeah, _when_?"

"We expect to be able to return his remains to you within the next cycle." She pushed her clipboard over towards Fugitoid — but Leo snagged it.

"What," Leo said slowly, carefully, his hands balling into fists around the clipboard. "Do you _mean_? His _remains_? You just said—"

Taani blinked, as though she didn't understand how they didn't understand. "Donatello has allied himself with a small rebel faction currently fighting against one of the most powerful rulers in that sector." She tapped the clipboard. "Please inform us as to the burial customs of your people, so that we are able to perform a successful, and respectful, recovery."

* * *

After Taani left, leaving her stupid clipboard behind, nobody spoke, listening to the distant sounds of Fugitoid bidding the Advocate farewell and talking about how _yes_ , he would reply in due course once _the boys_ had had some time to get over _the shock_.

Mikey looked up from where he was chewing on his thumbnail. It tasted like soap, and his mouth tasted nasty anyway. Something about bad news always did that to him. He caught Raph's eye and the look on his face and how Raph looked like all of him wanted to bust out in every direction at once, angry and sad and needing to _do something_ or _hit something_.

And Leo was all quiet and serious-face.

Nobody had touched the clipboard. It kind of just sat there on the table, waiting for someone to fill in the form about whether or not they should put Donnie's brain in a jar or freeze-dry him or some other weird stuff. Every so often, the pen would glow, like it wanted someone to just come pick it up already, except this was _Donnie_ , and there was no way his bros were going to let him come home in a basket.

Nobody was going to say it, but Mikey figured that they all knew what they were going to do now.

"Soooooooooo," he said, dragging it out until everybody was looking at him. "We're gonna go after him, right?"

* * *

Donnie woke to the odd sensation of being cradled.

It wasn't like the dim, distant memories of when Splinter had carried him, when he had been very young, and very small, or very hurt. Here, he couldn't smell the incense that had worn its way into Splinter's heavy robes, and when he curled his hands there was no fur or wool beneath his fingers but something rough, like bark from an old, old tree, like the ones that surrounded the farmhouse that they'd climbed last spring. It smelled _green_ , too, like something fresh and living and _tasty_.

He hadn't eaten in a while.

(He'd been so excited at the concept of _prison food! InterGA_ LAC _TIC PRISON FOOD_ to remember that the whole point of prison food was cheap, uncheerful, and _punitive_. Grey slop was not fun no matter what the planet was.)

His stomach growled, empty enough to make him burp quietly, and his mouth felt furry and dry from the replicated food and the ozone from the shuttle they'd stolen. He hadn't brushed his teeth in about a day — _gross_ , he thought — but he figured he could do it after eating breakfast. After eating _anything_.

He shifted, and whatever was cradling him held him closer, old wood creaking around him, and there was that smell again — he was so hungry…

It was easier, being one of four, to just accept what was on the table and pray that Mikey hadn't already thrown chocolate onto the cheese, or marshmallows into the algae, but Donnie really loved veggie pizza — the more veggies the better — mushrooms, and olives, and onions, and broccoli and _spinach_ and _peppers_ —

— there was something green-smelling near his face. He rolled over, rotating his jaw to try to get it into his mouth.

"Please do not eat my ship."

Donnie jolted up, accidentally bringing a mouthful of leaves with him. Guiltily, he covered his mouth and chewed them, and then swallowed, and then tried to look innocent. There was a soft rush of wind and branches through the room — but Jhanna was not there.

Was she watching him? There were no cameras, no vidscreens in the small room he was in – he couldn't see any technology at _all_.

He was sitting in some sort of cot, woven from branches that reached out from the walls of the room. As he swung his legs over, the branches slowly started to recede until only a few remained — a firm, polite invitation for Donnie to get out of bed and get to work. It was, he decided, a lot more preferable to his usual Alarm Clock By Mikey, or worse, the pointed, firm _h-hm_ when Splinter stood outside of his room — or worse, _the lab_ — wondering out loud if perhaps a certain delinquent son required a bedtime curfew if he could not be trusted to get up at a reasonable time in the mornings.

As he wiggled his feet against the floor, twigs and vines twitched and twisted themselves into shapes, as though asking him to follow them, and so he did. Great arcs of branches grew above his head like cathedral vaults, and beneath his toes was grass and decomposing leaves, as though he was back in Northampton and padding quietly through the woods around April's house.

The plants led him to Jhanna. The room was obviously the bridge of the ship, but it looked nothing like Donnie recognised. There were no seats, no bleeping machines – just Jhanna, standing in front of a screen made of very thin leaves, their veins glimmering from the starchart they were displaying. Her feet were tangled in a writhing mass of roots and soil.

"Is this a _bioship_?" he asked, staring around, his eyes wide.

"It is my ship," Jhanna replied. She did not turn around to look at him. "All ships from my world are like this. This is a Sapling."

Donnie frowned, twisting his wrist to make sure that his translator wasn't on the fritz. He didn't remember too many of the details once they'd left atmosphere — they'd ditched the transport ship in a nearby nebula, where one of Jhanna's co-conspirators had secreted her Sapling, and then proceeded to get the hell out of dodge. Donnie had spent most of his time manning the turrets — but what he did know was that Jhanna's ship wasn't exactly compact. It had been a great, hulking thing, twisted and wound together and glowing from some sort of internal core.

If this was a _sapling_ , Donnie thought, he didn't want to know what a _branch_ , or a _trunk_ , or any other class of ship was.

Overhead, branches drooped, full of rich, ripe alien grapes. His stomach rolled again and under his tongue flooded with saliva.

"Did you sleep well?"

"Um," Donnie said, dragging himself away from the branches full of sweet-smelling fruit. "Yeah, thanks. Did you contact my brothers yet?"

"I did not," Jhanna replied. "I thought perhaps you would like to do it."

She straightened, and Donnie watched the roots recede — _some sort of interface?_ — as she stepped away and towards him. Now that their escape was behind them, several systems away, Donnie got the chance to really look at her again.

He found himself looking up. She was almost as tall as _sensei_ , and even though Donnie had finally broken five-foot-double-digits after that spring at the farmhouse, he _still_ found himself looking up. He still couldn't tell if her face was scarred, or if that was just her skin, covered in thin bark and deep, dark lichen. Thick blue-black vines poured out of her head, small shoots and leaves branching out here and there, occasionally glowing with some form of bioluminescence. Donnie supposed it would be rude to ask for a sample. She rattled when she moved, and when she spoke, there was the distinct, underlying sound of rushing leaves, of wind through a forest, and the scent of old wood. It all settled in his stomach, and his heart beat a little faster.

"Um, yeah," he said. "That'd be great. We'd need to lock onto their co-ordinates."

"That won't be a problem. I am aware of the Fugitoid. And also your brothers." Jhanna pointed to a pop-up window on the bigger screen, where alien hieroglyphs fritzed for a moment before Donnie's translator kicked in and showed the bounty that Lord Dregg had put on his family's heads.

"Oh, great."

It was a very generous bounty.

"This is an old bulletin. You're quite the target now." She waved a hand, and the image changed to Donnie's mugshot next to Jhanna's own. Donnie wrinkled his nose – whoever had taken the mugshot had not caught his best angle, and he looked way too happy about the whole GALACTIC ARREST thing.

In his defence, the camera that had taken his picture had been part-drone, part _3D bioscanner_ , but Donnie could just imagine the sourpuss expression that would be on Leo's face when he saw that picture. Still. He would have to face the music sooner or later. He glanced around, looking for some sort of camera, or keyboard, or _something_. Instead, a small leafscreen grew down from a clump of vines above his head. "Right, sure." He cleared his throat, curling his toes as reeds and vines began to curl around his ankles. "And I just—uh—"

"Give the coordinates," she ordered. "Then speak."

Donnie spoke. It was not a very long message.

"There," Jhanna said, when he'd finished recording. "It is sent. I am looking forward to meeting your brothers, Donatello."

Donnie grimaced, then forced it into a smile.

He could hear the lecture from Leo already, and his arm already ached from the punch Raph would no-doubt give him: a solid one, knuckles right in his bicep, perfectly designed and perfected over seventeen years to give him a dead arm for the next four hours. But it wasn't like Donnie could have just _left_ Jhanna there, a victim of a terrible injustice! Jhanna had needed his help, and he had been happy to give it – except the escape became a rendezvous, became a chase, became a _welp you got played, nice going, genius_.

And then when he'd mentioned sending a message to let his brothers know he'd gotten out…

 _There are more of you?_ Jhanna had asked, during a brief respite from the gunfire and escaping.

 _Uh, yeah,_ Donnie had replied. _My three brothers and I are—kind of on a mission._

 _And they are like you?_

 _Turtles, or ninjas?_ Donnie laughed, then ducked as a drone went overhead. _Both, actually._

 _How interesting._

She had said _interesting_ the same way Donnie said _fascinating_ – when one of his experiments did something unique, or when he'd learned how to reprogram Kraangdroids to do the robot this one time – it was a _useful_ sort of interesting, instead of the _reading ten articles on Wikipedia_ interesting.

Interesting was fast becoming a word that Donnie sorely wanted to scratch out of the dictionary. Instead, he turned to frown at the leafscreen, imagining he could see his message fly out through the stars and to his brothers.

He didn't doubt that they'd come. The problem was, now he wasn't sure if it was a good idea for them to come.

* * *

 **tbc. thank you for reading! comments are loved and appreciated but by no means compulsory! have a great day!**


	4. part four

basically I'm getting this chapter up now because the show is about to crush my dreams of having Lucy Lawless as Jhanna and so I'm going to bury my head in the sand and pretend this weekend's episode isn't happening.

tmnt = viacom, as usual!

 _in this chapter:_ Leo and Donnie both stress a lot, Raph doesn't keep his mouth shut, and Mikey orders a pizza.

* * *

 **Stealers Keepers  
part four**

* * *

"Leo?"

Mikey rapped his knuckles on the bathroom door, and Leo had just enough presence of mind to retch _silently_ to prevent the Mikey Hug of Healing from bursting through the door, full of yoga, clean breathing, and a rousing game of guess-the-chunks. "What is it, Mikey?" he asked, when his throat was empty enough to let him speak.

"Fugitoid wants you on deck. We got a message."

The _from Donnie_ was unsaid, but Leo didn't need it — he could already tell, from the way he heard Mikey shifting from toe to toe outside of the bathroom, and the undertone of _let's go, Le-oh!_ under his words. "Gimme a minute," he replied. "I'll see you there."

After rinsing his mouth out, Leo managed to haul himself onto the bridge, where everyone was crowded around the big holo-panel at the front of the bridge, lit up with Donnie's big _I'm-not-at-all-in-trouble_ grin.

"What, did you toss your cookies?" Raph asked, and Leo glared, wiping the back of his wrist against his mouth; he could still taste the sour-bitter tang on his tongue, and when he sucked the inside of his cheeks, an acrid little lump of regurgitated cereal slunk up from behind his bottom lip. He forced it down and didn't mention — though he _wanted to_ — how Raph 'tossed his cookies' every time he stepped foot in the airlock.

"I'm fine," he said instead. "Just imagined the wrong space-milk this morning."

It wasn't an answer, but it was enough for Raph, who turned away and jabbed a thick finger at the console in front of him, and ignored the way Leo rubbed the front of his plastron, just over his belly, as though it would soothe the gnawing sting below the shell. "You all ready?" Raph asked, then pressed play anyway. The console let out a cheerful _blerp_ , and then Donnie started to move.

 _"Hey guys!"_

Donnie's voice was cheerful — a little blown out, but the holo looked healthy; there were no bruises or scrapes, and he carried himself in his usual slouch, his shoulders tucked a little and his shell and back hunched. But his head was up tall.

He looked far too pleased with himself.

 _"So, I'm not in jail anymore. Which is— nice. Thing is, I kind of — we kind of — need your help."_

"We!?" Raph snapped. "Who the heck is we?! These millions of _space rebels_ he's palling around the galaxy with?!"

"Shhh!" said Leo, Mikey and April.

Donnie was quiet for another few seconds, still smiling patiently, then said, _"Okay, so I'm assuming that Raph is finished yelling and making offensive and/or angry gestures towards my face—"_ Raph put his hands down. _"—so, uh. I don't have much time before we need to send this thing and I don't wanna risk this getting into the wrong hands, so, at oh-four-hundred earth time, I'm gonna ping the ship. It'll be fast, but I know you guys can do this. When you get that ping, lock onto the signal, ping back, and we'll send you the co-ordinates. Find us. And, uh. Good luck! Ooh! And if you could bring a jar of peanut butter with you, that would be_ awesome _. Okay bye!"_

He waved, and the holo ended, freezing Donnie into a closed-eyed smile, his hand blurred in the light. For a moment, there was heavy, still silence. Leo swallowed down the thick, cold dread in the top of his gut, and reached over to replay the message. " _Hey guys!_ " said Donnie again, and this time Leo watched _everything_ — the way Donnie moved, the way he smiled, and the way he talked. He spoke quickly, he spoke clearly, and he said exactly nothing that was useful aside from one specific thing.

When the video was over, the silence settled again, but only for a second.

Raph slammed his foot into a seat, and while Fugitoid bleeped in alarm, whirled on them all. " _Good luck_?" he snapped. "GOOD LUCK? Gimme that, I'm gonna call that eggheaded little brat back and—"

" _Raph_ ," Leo said, sinking into himself, into the strange, comforting detachment that came when he needed to take over, when things were really bad, when it felt like he was watching a different Leo in action. "Donnie said _peanut butter_." Raph slumped, the fight not going out of him but having nowhere else to go, tensing in his arms and legs. On Leo's left, Mikey sat on a computer bank, swinging his legs; he nodded when Leo looked him in the eyes, and that was the three of them, all ready and in line.

"I don't get it," Casey said, at length.

April glanced at him. "It's a code," she said.

"Yeah, but— why _peanut butter_?"

Mikey started smacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth; the sound cut into Leo and dug under his shell, right between his shoulders. It sounded like a ticking clock. It sounded like a bomb. "Sticky situation," Mikey said. "But at least he didn't ask for _crunchy_ peanut butter. That's, like, major no bueno."

"You guys are so weird," Casey said, and leaned back on his hands.

"What?" Mikey asked. "It's not like we can go 'hey guys, this is a trap. You should totally be careful of the stupid giant trap' if Shredder's on the other end of the line, so, peanut butter." He couched his hand confidingly on the side of his face. "That was my idea."

Leo sighed. "Anyway," he said. "Donnie's in peanut butter right now, which means, we need to haul him out, and then—"

Raph cut across him. "And how long's it gonna be until the next stunt he pulls?"

Leo swallowed down the coldness that suddenly rose in his chest; the conversation they never spoke about when it came to Donnie. About Donnie, and his constant need to _help the helpless_.

Which — Leo wanted to do it, too. But Leo usually wanted his team behind him.

Donnie?

Donnie just went ahead and did it anyway. And then stared any rebuke dead in the face, unflinching, unmoved, safe in the knowledge that he had been _right_ , that he had _done the right thing_.

Raph went on. "April, fine, she's part of the team. But this— Xanthippe? Madonna? Whatever her name is—"

"Tal'Jhanna xan'Jhanna," Fugitoid piped up helpfully. Everyone ignored him.

"—and the stinkin' _Pulverizer_ he's got chilling in a fish tank back at home? Don't try and tell me this isn't a pattern, Leo, because it _is_. And _we're_ the ones who are gonna have to bail him out. _Again_."

"That's not fair!" April jumped in, and Raph executed a beautiful, textbook _girl, talk to the hand_ movement that had Leo automatically raising his own hand to order April to _stop_ before she pulled her blaster and shot Raph in the mouth.

"This isn't about bailing Donnie out, Raph," Leo replied, and then— "well, okay, it is, but c'mon, Donnie always has a good reason."

"Oh, yeah? Like, this?" Raph screwed up his face and clasped his hands in front of him. " _You didn't see how she looked at me, sensei! You didn't look into her eyes_ ," he mimicked. "Face it, Leo, Donnie _always_ does this, and he's always _going_ to do this, because more than anyone else in this family, _more than_ _you_ , it's not Donnie's _heart_ that he's thinkin' with, it's his—"

" _Raph_."

For once, Raph shut his mouth before the real damage could be done. Instead, he made it worse: he tilted his head in April's direction, and gave Leo a significant Look.

And April was many things, but _dumb_ was not one of them. "Thanks, Raph," she snapped. "Nice to know what you _really_ think." Her voice was sharp, but the air in the room was like a too-thick gravy, and once April's voice faded, it mulched back together, grey and viscous and heavy on Leo's chest.

"Ignore him," Leo ordered, even though half of him wanted to hold Raph down and write _MONA LISA_ on Raph's forehead with a big pink sharpie made out of hypocrisy and irony. "Raph, this isn't the time. You wanna yell at Donnie? You can do it _when we get him back_."

"Oh, believe me, I _plan on it_." Raph straightened, reaching over and hooking a finger around Casey's elbow. "C'mon, Casey. Let's hit the holodeck and practise for whatever Donnie's stupid loved-up brain got us all into, _again_."

"RAPH."

" _Leo_ ," Raph shot back. "You're the leader, Leo. You better put a stop to it before the next time he doesn't just drag us into another _space war_ , he drags us to the _morgue_."

"Are you done?" Leo waited until Raph leaned back, his mouth still twisted like a pitbull that had chewed a bee. Then, before Raph could reply the smug way he always did ( _yeah I'm done_ with the subtext of _I'm done Leo I said all my important words now go ahead and try to beat me and all my rightness_ ), Leo found the words that he wanted to say: " _We get it_." He pulled out his Leader voice, and watched as Raph sullenly fell into line before things could get worse. The thunderclouds brewing on April's face were already enough of a _danger! danger!_ sign without Casey leaning in waiting to watch a pissing contest, and without Raph continuing this shit-on-Donnie parade. And part of Leo couldn't help deeply, deeply resenting the fact that Donnie was so far past what Leo would consider _good behaviour_ that he couldn't wait to see Splinter react to the whole sorry tale when they got home, and yet Leo was _still_ having to stand up for him. "But Donnie wanted to help someone. And whatever she said to get him out of that cell, was enough that he wanted to help her. Let's leave it at that."

Raph kept chewing his bee.

Until Mikey piped up again, smacking through the tension with, "Dude, Pulverizer's face is grody. You really think _he's_ Donnie's type? Donnie just tried to stop a nerd getting stomped on, that's all."

Raph threw up his hands, exasperated, and stomped out, and Leo could hear him muttering about how much he _hated space_ , and everything space had ever done to them, and did he mention that he _HATED SPACE_? because he _hated space_. As his stomping echoed down the hall, Leo reached over and gently shoved Mikey's shoulder, silently thanking whatever gods there were that looked out for turtles that Mikey existed.

"Welp," Casey said, clapping his hands together. "Time for me to bounce before Captain Hissypants goes and punches his way through the holodeck walls. Catch you guys later."

He ticked off a salute and disappeared down the hallway. Leo cast a look at the remaining outsider.

"Heavens, just _look_ at the time," Fugitoid said, his eyes blinking into clocks as he took the hint. "I seem to have left the oven on — do excuse me."

He activated his wheels and whirred out of the room, leaving the three of them alone. "Ignore Raph," Leo said again. "He's just… being _Raph_."

"I know," April said, too quickly, and folded her arms. Leo watched as, unconsciously, April flexed her fingers so they dug into the material of her space-suit.

"And you know Donnie," Leo prompted.

April didn't reply.

"That's not why we keep you around," Leo tried again, gently. "You're part of the team."

"I know."

Leo paused, gauging his next response. "Okay then," he eventually said, because any more would result in him trying to coax April out of her bad mood and he a) wasn't in the mood for coddling right now, and b) wasn't Donnie.

But maybe Donnie would just make things worse right now.

"C'mon," he said instead, tilting his head towards the door. "Let's go lock Raph and Casey in the holodeck together."

"I think they'd probably enjoy that," April sniped, with a tight little smile. "They found a luchadores program the other day and I'm not sure they're using it according to the story guidelines."

* * *

Once Leo managed to bury the mental image of Raph, Casey, a lot of sweat and some really homoerotic masks deep, deep down in his brain, down with the memory of his first Captain Ryan Meets A Dashing Turtle Alien OC Who Saves The Day fanfic and the rest of the family's shame-parades, he found himself watching the clock while April and the Fugitoid watched the scanners.

"There's the ping," April said, from Donnie's station. Leo craned his neck to see and sure enough, a tiny little blip blossomed out from somewhere in the galaxy. She hit a button, and Leo heard, rather than saw, Fugitoid's ship ping back; it sounded like a low sonar pulse, like out of old submarine movies, disappearing into the deep. "And now we wait," April said.

"Hopefully not too long." Leo set back on his heels, checking April again. She seemed to have calmed down now, wearing the distant, half-annoyed expression she usually did when she was focusing on something. Her bottom lip was chapped and chewed, and a thin line was wearing its way between her brows, but ever since he had known her, that had been there. Always something to be angry about, always something to _worry_ about.

Sure enough, within a minute, something made a noise, and Fugitoid's eyes became loading screens. "Aaaand, received. Oh, that is interesting," he said, his eyes blinking back to normal.

"What's interesting?" April asked, before Leo could.

"The directions are specifically to the _homeworld_. I was assuming that we'd rendezvous with Donatello first, but apparently that's not the case."

"What's the difference?"

Fugitoid paused to gather his words, and Leo felt something heavy start tugging in his gut again. Fugitoid was so smart, the smartest thing Leo had ever seen; he didn't need to think about what he wanted to say unless he needed to be really, really careful. And then Fugitoid spoke, and Leo was right: "We're flying into a _warzone_ , Leonardo. It might not be full of space-mines and cloaked grenades, but that planetary system _is_ still disputed territory. We'll need to be careful."

Once, that would have made Leo _so excited_. Now it just filled him with dread, and the mental image of the ship being blown apart, four empty shells drifting through space until they, too, clonked into space mines and were reduced to dust.

"Oh. _Great_. How far off is it?"

 _How far is it until we can BEAT DONNIE?_

"Approximately a day and a half's travel away." Fugitoid pressed his hands together. "I trust we're all ready to set off?"

Leo took in a breath through his nose, and nodded. Soon they'd have Donnie back, and the gnawing in his stomach from stress, from being three and not four, would go away, and Donnie would be grounded. "Okay. Wait, where's Mikey?" He leaned over, pressing a thumb against the ship's intercom. "Mikey! Need you on the bridge!"

"Dude, I'm right here." Behind Leo, the door swooshed shut behind Mikey, standing there with a big, flat cardboard box under his arm. Leo's tongue cramped long before the smell even hit: melted, sloppy cheese and cheap dough. "That's a _pizza_ ," Leo said slowly, rolling his tongue out of the spit ocean that had just formed in his mouth. " _Where_ did you get a _pizza_?"

Mikey, mouth full, jerked a thumb towards the airlock, and as Leo looked out of the main viewfinder, a pizza delivery shuttle puttered away from the ship, back to the planet.

"Did— you _ordered a pizza_ while we're trying to find our _brother_?!"

"Stress makes me hungry!" Mikey protested. "You want some? I promise, it has zero weird stuff. Aside from all the alien toppings that may or may not be weird stuff." He held Leo out a slice. "I'm pretty sure that these are totally normal space anchovies."

There was a whirring sound that Leo realised, a moment too late, was Fugitoid zooming in on the pizza. "Ah, dried tentacle slices! Yours is a stronger stomach than mine," he said, patting Leo on the shoulder and heading for his pod. "Everyone strapped in? Where are Raphael and—"

"Holodeck," April said, in a tone of voice that told everyone that they would not be coming out of the holodeck, even if they wanted to.

"Ah. Rightio. Well then. Shall we?"

There was a quiet murmur of agreement — plus Mikey enthusiastically ploughing through his tentacle pizza — then April tapped in the nav-points, Fugitoid started the engines, and they were gone.

* * *

The Veltien moons were eight satellites orbiting a giant gas planet. The second and third in the system were able to support (some form of) life, while the other six either spun too quickly, or too slowly, or kept being smashed into by comets, to be of any use. When Jhanna's Sapling entered orbit around the second moon, it narrowly avoided two other moons knocking it into deep space.

"Nobody will think to look here," she said, confidently manoeuvring the ship into position while Donnie clung to a thickly-vined wall and his breather. "My allies will meet us on the surface."

"Okay!" Donnie said. "Great! Awesome!"

"Is everything alright?"

"You drive like my brother," Donnie answered — as diplomatic as he could get. Jhanna smiled, clearly taking it as a compliment to be compared to one of the _turtle warriors_ rather than Leo, The Nightmare Of Driver's Ed.

 _He's least likely to hit something just for fun,_ Donnie had said once, and that was true, but just because Leo was _least_ _likely_ didn't mean that he would _never ever do it_. If anything, it was just worse because Mikey and Raph would treat all of Manhattan like their own personal game of _Grand Theft Auto_ , but Leo?

Leo couldn't be _dared_. Leo couldn't be tricked. Leo couldn't look at a grandma, pushing her groceries home, or a happy, singing group of Hare Krishna, spreading love and cheer and tambourine music through the neighbourhood in the early evenings, and come up with a _points score_.

But Leo?

Leo could be _baited._

 _Hey Leo, hit that dumpster._

 _Raph, no. Sit back down._

 _What's the matter, Leo? Is that dumpster too scary?_

 _Shut up, Raph._

 _Big tough fearless leader can't even give a little tap to a spooky scary dumpster? Oh no! There's just so much garbage in there! What if it has —gasp! Germs!_

 _SHUT UP, RAPH. Did you seriously just say 'gasp' out loud? I mean, seriously?_

 _Leo?_

 _No, Mikey._

 _But Leo!_

 _No!_

 _LEO. THATDUMPSTERCANCELLEDSPACEHEROES—awwww YEAH SONNNNNN Raph you owe me twenty pizzas and dude why is Donnie breathing like that?_

Leo also flat-out didn't care to learn how to parallel-park.

 _It's an assault-truck, Donnie, I think we're going to get more than just a ticket if the cops catch us._

Jhanna was a slightly more considerate driver than Leo. But that really wasn't saying much.

When they landed on the moon, a small contingent of other plant-people were waiting for them. Donnie squinted against the trisolar light as he followed Jhanna out of the ship, and counted. "Are these your generals?" he asked, laughing slightly as confidence buoyed him. "Ten armies? This might not be too difficult!"

"These are my allies," Jhanna said.

The buoy sank.

"I mean, they're representatives, right?" Donnie tried to swallow down the unsure quaver in his voice. "You have others coming, right?"

"I do not need anybody else." She moved away, towards her rebels, and they moved towards her, their _queen_ , leaving Donnie hanging back, watching. Jhanna carried herself in what Donnie supposed counted as regal, her back straight, and her hands held out, palm-up and open. Each rebel approached, wiping a finger against the palm of Jhanna's hand, and her hand glistened in the light – blood, or something like it, catching the sun. When all ten had paid their respects, Jhanna closed her hands into fists, and then opened them again, her hands clean and new.

"Oh kay." Donnie counted again, and then again: still, ten. No matter how many times he counted it (maybe there was a body he hadn't seen — perhaps some of them were _invisible_ — this was space, after all!), all Jhanna had was ten rebels to back her up.

Ten, plus Donnie, plus his brothers.

"Just." He crept closer, wringing his hands together, already trying to twist off _his brothers' blood_ from where it was now, currently, _all over his hands_. "It seems a little, heh, heh, I mean, the odds are a little—" _TERRIBLE_. "against you, right?"

"Odds," a rebel scoffed, holding a hand out towards the rest of the group. "We have no need of odds. We have _righteousness_."

Donnie couldn't help himself: he could stand for a lot of _really weird stuff_ — plant princesses, getting roped into a planetary coup, that one time he and his brothers went skipping through Mikey's head — but dismissing _mathematics_ , the fundamental building blocks of the universe, the constant, the _everything_? "Yeah, you can be righteously _dead_ when you go running into battle ten against a _thousand_. Ooh, or go up against a full military armed with— what are those, _wood phasers_?"

The rebel held his wooden blaster closer to him. "It's a disruptor," he replied.

Donnie scoffed.

"We have need for nothing else! Not that an off-worlder like _you_ could understand." The rebel stepped closer, squinting at Donnie's green skin as though it was a particularly off-putting growth compared to the lichen that covered his own face. "Do you even photosynthesise?"

"No," Donnie said shortly.

" _Mammal_ ," the bush-man responded, as though _mammal_ to him meant what _sewer apple_ meant to Donnie.

"Actually, I'm a reptile," Donnie said primly, and didn't say _kinda_.

" _Enough_." Jhanna's voice silenced them all, even Donnie. "The turtle is right. We _are_ small, but with an accurate plan, we will _succeed_." Then she smiled. "Fortunately, Donatello, my _ally_ , is something of a strategist. It is thanks to him that I was able to escape. And he has _brothers_."

The translator did not say _brothers_ exactly; the metaphor was longer, more fluid, something about the same mother tree, the same soil in which Donatello and his brothers grew, watered by the poison of the Kraang but somehow managing to rise above the filth of their origins. Donnie opened his mouth to object — then quickly closed it when Jhanna kept talking: "—and if this terran can salvage himself, we, too, can rid our home of this current _infestation_."

Someone spat. It hissed as it hit the ground, a thin curl of steam gently unfolding into the air and then becoming nothing. Silence rolled through the group, and Donnie felt his shoulders tighten, already anticipating the speech that Jhanna was about to give:

"Moriah, may her roots rot, may her leaves see no sunlight, thinks that she has _won_." As Jhanna spoke, the vines on her head responded to her bloodlust, slowly starting to rise and weave around her head like hungry snakes. "She sits on _my throne_ , in the forests of _my ancestors_. She is a _degradation_. And _she will be destroyed_."

The rebels surrounding her murmured in agreement. Someone yelled out "DEATH TO THE IMPOSTOR" and the other rebels echoed them, holding up their wood phasers. Jhanna watched her loyal rebels with something not unlike satisfaction; it was, Donnie realised later, the way Splinter looked at them sometimes when they came back from a fight against the Shredder, hale, and hearty, and victorious. Like good little soldiers.

She crossed the clearing, taking Donnie's chin in her rough-barked hand, and his heart leapt into his throat, both fear and something else. "Donatello. With your help, I will not only reclaim my throne, but I will have Moriah's head, and her body will burn upon a pyre made of her family, her ashes cast to the seas where she will never put down root."

"Oh," said Donnie, as Jhanna's men cheered and began chanting his name. "Great!" said Donnie.

 _I'M GOING TO DIE_ , thought Donnie.

* * *

 **tbc. comments are loved and appreciated! have a great day and thank you for reading!**


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